Q: What is network convergence?

A: The definition of network convergence will be different depending on when the question was asked. Not that many years ago, this term referred to converging telephony and video conferencing onto Ethernet. Today, it generally refers to converging storage networking onto Ethernet.

Among other factors, a number of Ethernet protocol improvements were necessary to consolidate storage traffic atop copper cabling. Fibre Channel as a protocol assumes a lossless connection, a feature that TCP/IP doesn't support. Thus, Ethernet itself required some improvements to support transferring Fibre Channel traffic over Ethernet, also called FCoE, using the same devices that pass traditional production network traffic.